


Carrion Flowers

by Calesvol



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Bad Ending, Implied/Referenced Torture, Other, Physical Abuse, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-08-02 07:44:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16300931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calesvol/pseuds/Calesvol
Summary: The Life Foundation came back, this time for Eddie and his Symbiote. It didn't end well.





	Carrion Flowers

Warning(s): M, torture mentions, physical abuse

* * *

_Be grateful,_ they’d spat at her through their forked tongues. That had appeared to be death was, instead, a suddenly induced coma. The Life Foundation couldn’t afford to lose anymore intellectual property. Not when they’d already lost so much when the Symbiote, now being known as Venom, had vanished off the radar. Dora’s heels clicked on shined tile that reflected dreary reflections, trying not to look down. Not when these floors and walls harbored still so many terrible secrets.

The public believed SHIELD had absorbed them. They didn’t know that SHIELD had been compromised by Hydra years ago.

Swallowing nervously, Dora Skirth took a clipboard hung from a hook scrawled with vitals like a seismic chart. When she’d declared she wanted to be a doctor, her Jewish parents had celebrated it. They even made her favorite desert that night: Turkish-style Baklava. She thought she’d be helping people, making the world a better place.

Not blackmailed into compliance lest she disobey.

 _Edward Charles Allan Brock_ , the header read in stiff, martial print. It was an accident, the papers coldly informed her. His forcefully broken legs had been the result of a fall from the extraction. The multiple liaisons, the bruises, the malnutrition. The light coldly reflected her horror as she saw the genuine article bound to a bed, eyes swollen shut. His arms were tethered to the bed, but it was because of a negative reaction to the anti-psychotics, it swore!

A puff of air breezed past as the glass door slid open, she tried to school her face calmly. Not have tears bubbling in her eyes. She moved some bangs over her eyes. Dora knew the camera angles well enough.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Brock.” Was that serious enough? Detached and cold? The walls had ears. Eyes upon eyes. A chilly stool was what she sat upon. How blinding false angels in white could be. “How are you?” Children pretended the audience was in their underwear. She dreamt her witnesses were still _alive_.

Edward coughed roughly. Craning his head painfully. “…Doc?” He started to move, and so did she, purposefully. Like she was restraining him from starting too violently.

“Don’t, please,” she hissed quickly and quietly, hands on his shoulders. Hovering over him like an angel of death. “Try not to move. You were injured gravely in the process, Mr. Brock.” This she modulated normally. Loud enough for the ears and spies to hear. Her leash and chain collar slacked a little. “Can you tell me how you feel?”

He understood, thank god. This wasn’t like last time; they wouldn’t let it be. “…It’s too quiet. Why th’fuck can’t I hear it? Ven. It— It’s gotta be in pain, doc.” He sounded delirious. She jotted that down. Dora remembered what it felt like, temporarily. It felt like having your heart cut from your chest without anesthetic, she thought. Only to herself. Like bloody hands before they could be washed.

Edward’s jaw worked, tears building in the puffy corners of his eyes. Painful, purple. “I still remember it real clear. It screamin’. It was in pain. Can’t—Can’t ya at least tell me how it is? Jus’—I gotta know, please.” Dora felt her heart constrict. Her eyes fell shut, and she clenched the clipboard until her knuckles blanched.

Until it sagged. She could feel Edward’s eyes implore so heavily he might as well have thrown himself at her feet begging. “The extraction process, you—may not be able to recall much, Mr. Brock. We used symphonic dissonance to…discourage a bond. To remove it from the host. It…didn’t occur easily. Once we did, “ she glanced at him, his eyes watery with a tear slipping out; his body remembered, “the subject was exposed to high temperatures. An oven.”

It sounded clinical, but there was nothing mechanical in the way Edward’s throat bobbed. He inhaled shakily, even through the restraints, his sweat-marred forehead strained against the band there when he fought weakly. “I remember, doc. I remember.” His face was raw and flushed, cheeks shining as tears rode over them. His chest shuddered from both the pain of memory and itself. “It was—screamin’, so loud. Y’ever hear anything like it? It sounded like death. Like all those horror movies, an’—I couldn’t save it. _DAMMIT_!”

Dora watched blankly as his head shook, then limbs flexed. It was like watching a car fly over a cliff. The bed shook, sheets upset as Edward thrashed and caused it to whine in protest. “Dammit, dammit, _DAMMIT DAMMIT_ — _I COULDN’ DO SHIT, AN’ IT’S IN SO MUCH PAIN I CAN’T_ —” He caterwauled while writhing like a worm cut open for bait, twisting and banging himself against the glass. The bars rattled, the bulletproof glass shook. Sweat, blood, tears. The stuff hard work took. The stuff of a soul so tortured.

Tears of her own fell as she blankly watched, barely reacting as the door to Brock’s room opened and men in white with black nightsticks stomped through and she parted past them like the Red Sea. Watching, haplessly, as they beat Edward into submission. Cursing profanely against some ignorant god as they did. Edward’s cries and screams became muted, voiceless wails as they pummeled him, blood on the sheets, the mattress. Bruises on top of bruises.

His thrashing stopped. Her shock didn’t.

Wide-eyed, the men filed noiselessly through, not even a word of regard. Not when she was transfixed upon the subject, the man rasping breaths with lips coated a shining red. Muffled sobs choked up and burbled sickly, his eyes puffy again. Purple instead of just red. Black instead of purple.

“…Edward?”

Her voice, it sounded so broken. Not as shattered as his. Remembering she had flesh, blood, and bone, Dora rose from her seat as the stone ebbed away. A heel clicked. Then another. Hands gripped the bed’s rails, slick with blood and sweat. He sobbed, noiseless and drowning in his own salt.

There was nothing she could do to help him.

“ _I’m sorry_.”

The good doctor crumpled to the ground and wept.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: This was from a prompt I filled on tumble for an anon.


End file.
